The impact of all this dithering about is that I’ve played exactly one game of historical miniatures in 2012, and it was pitifully small (though quite fun). I’m not too upset-I really enjoy being able to chase whatever hare crosses my path modeling/painting-wise, but I’d really like to do more gaming in 2013. So, here in bullet point form are my goals for 2013.

Finish company level forces (German and British) in 1/285 for WWII gaming by mid-January.
Decide on a type of terrain for 1/285. I’ve been waffling back and forth between some sort of sheet/pastels system and more formal boards.
Build the 1/285 terrain and put on a full WW2 game using Too Fat Lardies rules, I Ain’t Been Shot Mum v3.
Finish platoon level sci-fi forces (Khurasan Feds vs. As-yet-to-be-determined foe) by June.
Build a modular terrain system for 15mm gaming and play some Tommorrow’s War using the aforementioned sci-fi minis.
Once these two goals are complete, I’ll consider myself free to pursue other miniatures gaming interests.
What are the chances of me adhering to these goals? Practically nil. We’ll see, though. I’m actually pretty close on the 1/285 stuff. My Germans are 75% painted, and my British armor and a company of infantry arrived in the mail last week, so the barrier of having the figures has been crossed.

A few pictures of some things I’ve been working on in the last couple of months follow.

I have no idea what manufacturer they came from, but I love these 25mm fantasy sculpts. The fellow on the right is far from finished, obviously.

I have big dreams of suckering the local gaming club into trying out miniatures wargaming through Old West skirmishing.

Perry Brothers Crusaders and some Foundry Vikings. I’m not sure what to do with these guys, and obviously I’d have to buy more figures (and shields!) regardless of the rules.

GHQ armor, and Adler German Infantry. You’re looking at a platoon of Stugs, a couple of Pak40s, and a platoon of Panzergrenadiers with some additional elements.

This is where I’m at with my German forces

Adler infantry, GHQ armor.

I struggle painting Napoleonics. I have a half-dozen unfinished Voltigeurs that are driving me nuts!

You eat city, you destroy man, die you must!

This was a really fun model kit I built back around 2003 or ’04, it’s been so long ago actually. It’s a re-issue of a Polar Lights kit in a cool retro styled box, almost identically to the first release infact. From what I remember it went together really well, as you can see it’s very sturdy looking with the plastic being very thick in most areas of construction. I wish more kits were thick like this one; it makes for much better replicas and the details stand out more I think. The buildings you had to put together and I love that there is a mini-diorama included with the kit. Some kits today that don’t even have a base or extra items seem like a rip off. It’s those extra details that make a kit memorable to me.

I still own the cool box for this model kit. It’s a very sturdy box and I love the retro design. I really enjoy the re-issues of kits these days in the original boxes. It goes without saying how bad the newest boxes are with hardly any words or text about what you are buying. Such as the AMT/ERTL car kits from the 2000’s. This one is the same but it makes up for it with sheer style. This kit is around a foot tall, I don’t remember the exact specs but you can find them online if you look. I got this kit for the great price of $15 back in the day, and from the looks of it you can get one for around the same price, which is great news for the modeler interested in this subject.

Who will help save our hopeless city from an overweight middle aged man dressed up in a lizard costume?

If you really look at the model kit you will see how far models have come along, there are much better kits or statues you could buy to represent Godzilla but you have to remember that this was a kit from the 60’s. People say that kind of statement a lot, “well back in the day”….but humans have been creating masterpieces of art for centuries, ever since man first began his life on Earth. So to say something like that is really not separating business practices from artist’s creations. Even back in the 60’s they could make amazing stuff; it’s just that the company choose to make the kit this way. So regardless of the age its reflecting the company’s own techniques / costs / business plan more than an artistic one. That’s just something to think about regarding old model kits.

This has been the only Godzilla kit I have built so far. I did work on some other creature kits but sadly lost interest in the hobby about that time. I think mainly because I started to enter contests and could not separate the fact that the people won had tons of money for after-market materials and more paints / supplies than I could afford. So if you are considering entering contests be warned it might ruin the hobby for you.

I think I did a great job weathering this guy up. I used a mix of dry brushing, airbrushing and using pastels to create this look. I wanted to have a more realistic look than that on the box. The internet was a new resource for me at that time to look up pictures of Godzilla. I see a lot of people go into painful research to get the colors right per movie but I just made up my own idea for this one.

The figure has really big bug like eyes that I really never cared for. It makes the creature look to cartoon like or anime inspired. I am sure this was done so the guy in the suit could see what he was doing. I imagine those actors got heat related health problems a lot on set. Everything about this kit reflects that a scale human could be fit inside. That might even be a fun alternate project to make, sculpt a head and put it where Godzilla’s head is as a scene after the cameras stop rolling. What fun!

Why don’t you ever see a scene of Godzilla going to the bathroom?

In different Godzilla movies his scale is bigger or smaller just depending on the budget and style of the film. For this model Godzilla is enormously bigger than the city. Just look at the tallest skyscraper, he is easily 5 or 6 times taller! Maybe that is why he walks so slow because of the lack of oxygen?

Another thing I remember is that the seams between the legs and the body along with the arms were really hard to smooth out. That area almost dipped down which made filling it out extremely challenging for me at the time. I know I can do better these days but for a kid building the model kit it would be hard to be please with it.

I knew that I was not the best painter in the entire world. I knew that I did not know how to shade correctly and most of the time did not try to. I liked pastels as I could get the same effect more or less without the fear of messing up hours of work trying to shade the colors together. During this process I photographed the model against a blue screen to gauge how my colors were looking. I love movie special effects so making it look at least screen accurate was my goal. Even if the model did not look correct as long as it appeared to in a photograph then I was happy. These test photos show I was on to something. With more hours put into the model I would have had something amazing.

Being a photographer by trade I found that lighting models to be the best way to learn lighting when I first started. By trying to simulate a look as in the posters I found new techniques on my own – it was an amazing time in my life. I learned so much about the hobby and found that any subject can be a modeler’s dream not just muscle car kits. So if you are getting down about the model building hobby try switching subjects you might find the spark you need to keep going at it.

In some ways I think that the character of Godzilla represents natural floods that have plagued the island of Japan over the span of time. They both cause the same amount of destruction and no matter what humans try to do it always happens. It certainly is a fighting idea that a relative of a dinosaur could be walking around Earth. Imagine if you looked out a skyscraper and saw a creature taller than your building. Just being than a two-story building would freak people out. Imagine the chaos and riots that would happen! A lot of times in these “Godzilla” movies many of the residents seemingly expect this to happen and were the case in the most recent US movie of the same name.

I think it would be much more interesting to watch the movie from small human’s point of view. Scientifically the creature would act much like other animals do. I don’t know if it would go on murderous rampages but I doubt it. Sometimes Godzilla seems to act very animal like and other times it automatically knows its mission to protect humans then swim back to the depths of the ocean, I don’t relate to the character. I am up for mindless destruction like any other person but the plots of these films are paper thin making the new GI Joe movies look like masterpieces.

I bet nobody actually knows how many Godzilla movies there are in the world, it seems they keep getting made. You could take an assortment and all watch them having a hard time telling which one was made in the 50’s vs. one made today. I respect that they still film them in the same ways but it seems the story is always the same. Big monster, some radiation, unknown elements, bad creature created by a bad guy, save us Godzilla!

For me growing up as a kid the most memorable thing about Godzilla was playing the game Rampage for the NES (Nintendo Entertainment Center) video game system. I had a blast, I always wanted to be the Godzilla like guy named Lizzie, nobody wanted to be the King Kong like guy named George – I remember having some pretty intense arguments about who gets to play as Godzilla in that game. Its true that Japanese have a different culture and maybe I will never understand the fascination of the series, maybe its all lost in the bizarre translations of the dialog. Sometimes the translation is very funny and other times its scary how creepy and overly sexual everything the characters say is. But the world always needs pointless destruction; in the US we have the Fox News channel for that; so bring on the monsters Japan, help save us all!

The most phenomenal discovery of our time… becomes the greatest adventure of all time.

I got so pumped up writing about the yellow dinosaur toy I am repainting that I dug out pictures of my old Lindberg Jurassic Park Velociraptor model kit to share. What better way to celebrate the time for giving, presents and overweight men dressed in red suits than with one of the most dangerous and violent dinosaurs of all time!

This is a plastic model kit of co-dino star of the movie Jurassic Park; the Velociraptor. The movie that made kitchens a dangerous place to congregate! Released in 1992 this kit is 15 inches long and 6 inches high. I built this kit back in 2004 and its showing its age to me. This was the very first dinosaur model and animal model kit for that matter that I ever built. I was so excited to get this from my dad that I built it right away. At that time I just had also been introduced to green putty or modeling putty to fill in gaps and holes in model kits and I used it for the first time on this kit. So that explains the rather dull finish in the hip / leg joint.

Looking back I can see my enthusiasm coming through on this kit. It might not be the best thing I will ever make but it’s was a good start inspired by my love of movie special effects. I certainly have grown as a modeler since those days and above all I have good memories about this kit. I love the movies the first being my favorite followed by the 3^rd then the 2^nd in last. I even had a lot of the toys from the movies, they still keep making them although I don’t know if they are actually being bought. You can easily find this kit still these days for not more than $20.

Life finds a way.

Along the time that I made this model I also started to get into photography. I had a real passion for it. I learned mainly on my own but I had also interned at a TV station where I picked up some camera skills. The beauty of lighting models is that if you can do so much with miniatures that if you replicated full scale would cost a tremendous amount in terms of crew and gear; not to mention time to setup. It was the best thing for my photography / filmmaking career to photograph my models. After this one I realized that I had almost if not more fun lighting and photographing my models that I started to take pictures of all my toys and the rest is history as they say.

I still have this model kit; I can’t really review the kit as most of the memories of the actual build have been lost to time. I did not take any in-progress pictures at the time; the thought of that was foreign to me at the time. At last I saw the kit it was missing its rear tail. I think one of my mom’s cats knocked the model over and broke but she seems to deny that happened.

An adventure 65 million years in the making.

The next step is to question the cats! The best part of the model was the face; I spent the most time on that part. It’s hard to tell with my contrasted lighting but the dino is sprayed in airbrush patterns and shaded as well. For this article I re-edited the photos to add the logos and box art so people will know what the kit was in case they are interested in buying the model kit somewhere.

I love Jurassic Park, I want to g watch it right now, well as soon as I get done writing this. it’s great to have your old kits as a kid, sure they don’t look like much but they have some glamor of hope and inspiration that made me excited about what I do. There were no barriers or obstacles just the pure excitement of doing something new and seeing what you can create, I miss those days.

Hulk smash, me paint, me happy, you read my article! Rawwr! I am back again with the 2^nd update on repainting this MUSCLE toy figure named Goriki. Figure number 63 from the classic toy line has some great details and this one is coming together nicely, let’s take a look shall we.

I made a side by side comparison shot to show off my progress in painting this figure. Impressive huh? Well, these toys are great because they come without paint on them leaving my mind up to my own interpretation like a good sci-fi book. As you can see from the previous update the figure looks dramatically different and I am happy how it’s turning out. You can check out the first part here. These MUSCLE figures are about the same size as Warhammer figures are for comparison sake.

On top of the green base coat I mixed up some gray paint into green paint and created a wash with it to put over all the cracks and lines in the figure. At first the paint was too thin to hold paint so when it dried it let almost like water stain marks or fine particles of paint, not a good effect. So I had to make the paint thicker and pretty much repaint the figure all in one go. I worked tremendously fast so it would not dry and I could add some subtle shading. I will admit this is more contrasted then I had hoped but I am just working with what I have right now. After the dark shading came out I did the same thing for the highlight areas making his muscles stand out against the dark background turned out great.

Another idea I am planning on doing is adding gloss paint on the raised parts of his muscles to make them stand out even more; this could also look like battle sweat. For the belt I added many coats of black wash. I think I will go back and add some light brown marks to it so it does not look completely black. That area of the figure is kind of weak so having it dark hides some of the problems I noticed.

For the boots and arm bracelets I added a thin white wash to them to give the effect they were worn and covered in dust. I went back and scratched them up a bit with some rough sand paper. I am not really that happy with the color of the boots but I am just going to live with it. The sculpting of the shoe part is rather poor I think and looks unrealistic, its more just like a blog of plastic or like those shoes you buy at Wal-Mart that light up, you know the ones!

For the figures head I once again put some black wash on it to tone down the super yellow hair I had before. I think I might re-paint the hair to more of a blond-brown or orange look just to add more contrast to the skin. One thing I also did was add a thin coat of washed out yellow to the whole figure, all-over in fact to given it a hit of light hitting it and an over-all tone if that makes any sense.

At this point I am going to say the figure is 90% done considering my current level of hobby supplies and not having a smaller brush. I want to make either a simple base or diorama for this figure but I don’t have any ideas at the moment. It seems to photograph much brighter than the figure looks on my table in normal light. I am happy how it turned out and the details I was able to bring forward. The last few bits are often the most time consuming and hard to finish for me. Check back soon for the final toy’s pictures and hopefully by then I will have a mini base created for it. Wish me luck!

What if World War Two soldiers recycled their uniforms for a friendly game of baseball? That is the idea I had for this figure re-paint. Grab a bat and swing on along as I walk you through the steps on how I did it.

Baseball is awesome for about 3 innings then you realize all the fun things you could be doing! If you are playing it’s one thing but to sit there, man that is hard, at least for my ADD nature. Even when I used to play as a kid being stuck out in the outfield was boring as could be. But I thought it would be a fun subject to be inspired by for this repaint.

This toy is one of the five that I got in a pack from a local dollar store. These are over-sized army men toys about the size of Star Wars figures for reference. You can take a look at my previous entry here Big Army Men where I am working on repainting on as a traditional solider. I thought it would be a fun and unique idea to paint this solider as a baseball player. The army uniform is almost the same as a baseball uniform from the 40’s as well with baggy pants and a retro feel. If only the popcorn costs a nickel too!

I started by painting the figure in white primer as you should always do when repainting pretty much anything. After that I added 3 coats of white semi-gloss paint all over the figure including the skin areas. This is because when painting white it normally takes a few coats to get the correct finish. I know there are paints that claim you only need one coat, but come on any experience painting with white and you know that you need a few coats. Next I used a flesh color for the skin. I choose to model this figure after the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, also my favorite team in baseball. I took some liberties with the design, not really copying the real uniforms but making use of what the figure had going for it.

I really like this pose, it’s a very classic military pose that also works extremely well as a baseball figure. It looks like he is about to throw the baseball to a running trying to make a break for home plate or throw a mind-blowing curve ball, what fun!

The paint is just patched in right now to get an idea of what else to do with the figure. I find it really hard to add light and dark areas to white so as far as shading goes it will be limited to his skin that is shown. I like how the pack is showing up on his stomach. I had the other idea to paint the grenades like baseballs, almost tan in color but I think having those grenades is more humorous. If I recall they used to call those types pineapple grenades. I do love me some pineapple too! Nothing tastes more refreshing than fresh pineapple!

After this photo I put another “C” on his left arm. There are small notches along the bottom of the coat of which I painted red but for the sleeves and legs I just painted strips in. from far away you can’t tell they are raised. My brush is not small enough but if it is I would paint a thin black line around the boundaries of the white and red parts to make the contrast even higher.

I thought of painting the players number or Reds on his chest but it looks like it’s going to be to complicated and clashing with his army gear. I think I will try to add the team name on his arms in a vertical fashion that might work. I will look at 40’s styling to see what else might fit in. I had the idea to sculpt a bill for the hat and I am still debating if I want to do that or not. Baseball hats have always confused me, I do wear them a lot but if you think about it as far as protecting your skin from the sun they really are only doing ¼ of the work as old hats do.

I think personally this is one of the most creative projects I have done so far in my current revival of modeling and figure painting. It feels great to take a cheap dollar store toy and make it into something cool. I have decided to paint the remaining large figures in funny ways as well. I think one is going to be a clown and the other more baseball teams such as the now gone Expos, the color combo makes for a good uniform.

Well that is all for this update, check back soon for more. Please subscribe, comment, rate and let me know what you are working on.

From the movie that made kitchen horror famous!

As a small kid growing up I loved dinosaurs as many young kids do. They are an interesting animal that lived for many millions of years on planet Earth. Not only have they evolved into many animals we see today, in some ways they are even related to us. The Velociraptor undoubtedly made famous by the movie Jurassic Park is an awesome creature. This toy is going to receive a re-paint by my hand, let’s see if I can bring back some life into this old forgotten toy.

Plastic dinosaur toys are probably one of the most created toys since toydome ever started. You can find tons of companies that produce them all varying in quality to something that resembles a lump of clay to something that might be suited for a museum. I don’t recall where I got this toy dinosaur from. It has no markings on it anywhere to be found. If by some chance you know please let me know. I had originally primered this toy back a few years ago so I don’t even remember its original color, but I am going to guesstimate that it was all yellow. Just go with it.

This toy has some nice features and details in its sculpt. I like the pose, textures and slight anime proportions of the dinosaur. I think the tail is a bit on the short side but on the plus it stands up real well so you can play with it. The legs don’t move however and the seam between the legs and the body is noticeable. I decided in the end not to fill this in with putty, namely because I don’t own any sand paper or carving tools to make the texture work – or maybe I was just feeling lazy.

It’s hard to paint a dinosaur I will admit, as you might know I currently have a very limited supply of tools and paints to choose from. My approach to this one is quite different not having an airbrush, if there were ever any type of modeling project suited for an airbrush it would be painting dinos! I looked up some research photos for the raptors and have concluded you really can pick any color combo you want it will look right. Naturally, if you think about it there is a good chance that the real dinosaurs were earthy colors, suited to blend into their environment.

On a side note, so much more has been uncovered about raptors in the recent years. Enjoy this video explaining the new updates to this creature. It turns out unlike in Jurassic Park the raptors were only about 3 feet tall and most likely covered with some sort of feathers! I wonder if they will be remaking Jurassic Park again. Also the dinosaurs featured in the movie were from the Cretaceous Period not the Jurassic but the producers felt Jurassic sounded deadlier for the film.

A few months back I started to work on this toy some more. I painted it my standard yellow I have then added white wash highlights. At the time I had some pastels that I was going to cover it in to try out. Fast-forward to now where a lot has happened and I no longer have those pastels I am going to just paint this by hand. On top of the yellow I splotted on thinned out red paint to get this current look. The contrast really brings out the details in the toy. I think my next step will be to add black wash all over the dinosaur and see what that looks like. I am going to make the nails / toes darker like they are semi-covered in dirt. I have no plans for a diorama yet either so if you have ideas let me know, but keep it simple!

Having learned that the real version should be covered in feathers presents some challenge but for this one I am going to turn off that part of my brain and just focus on painting. I mean how would I even come up with mini-feathers to apply to the skin? Hmm, that might be a fun project down the road when I am on the better side of life. Thanks for taking a look and look for another update soon.

Back again for more dollar store toy action fun? That’s right folks! I am going to be re-painting yet another one of those “amazing” dollar store toys form the Warrior Play Set line. This one is an ogre like creature complete with a heavy duty doubled sided battle axe. I am assuming it’s for battle, it could just be an elaborate decorative piece that will shatter if ever actually used in combat, who knows; it came from the dollar store after all. Let’s get started.

I got this figure at the same time as the Skelton and Gimli like toys from the Warrior Play Set line of cheap dollar store toys. No big plans for this figure, I am just going to repaint it and see what I can come up with. This figure has a great look about him with lots of details that stick out on his body. I found it rather funny that this one has a few errors though. When I was in the store looking at the many different ones on the rack they all had the same problems. Can you see what they are yet? Well this figure only comes with 1 weapon as opposed to the “3PC” tag in the upper right hand corner of the packaging. Also the figure is impossible to stand up as it’s placed in the package because his right foot is on backwards! It’s just like that transporter scene from the movie Spaceballs! Minus two hot twins of course.

How did they make this of a mistake? You can’t have him stand straight up, just in a half-ass crouched stance that makes the figure look like he is about to toss his cookies. Maybe the guy ate an under cooked human for breakfast and is feeling the effects of it before battle? Who knows, but since the toy is only $1 I find it very funny they made these errors.

I really just jumped in to painting with this toy. Another interesting bit is that the underarms of the figure are hollowed out. There is actually a dug out section of his arms that looks really pathetic. I thought about filling this in with some putty but with the many other eye soars I decided it’s not really going to help out things much. If I had my Dremel I could cut off his foot and put it on the correct way and sculpt a nicer crotch section as the one used on this is too thin for the characters size and looks like a naked ken doll instead. And not the football star Ken more like Plummer Ken or some other blue collar job.

What’s nice about this toy is that since the paint job is so pathetic it really opens the doors for me as far as imagining the ogre all painted up. I did not really have any specific characters to copy off for this figure. I looked around online at pictures of orcs and whatnot and decided to paint the characters’ skin green. This is also aided by the fact that I have a large tub of Tamiya flat green paint #XF-5 ” available at your local well stocked hobby store today” to work with. ‘Gotta love having limited paint colors! I added some yellow to the mix to make it a bit lighter for the base coats. For the first layer I just tried to cover as much of the figure as possible, not really worrying if it got covered up all the way.

After that I added the base coats to the chains, shackles and armor. Even though parts of the figure were already black i painted the whole toy in white primer before starting my base coats. If you want to have a really bad paint job then don’t primer your model or wash it, just a friendly tip. There are a lot of great details in this figure actually and with the correct shine of paints they will standout nicely. I especially liked the shoulder armor pads. I had the idea that this might be made out of copper so I put a thin wash of brown mixed with yellow to create that effect. The armor on the side of his arms I really did not know what to do with. I painted them a different shade of brown but I found there was too much brown at that point and it was taking away from the shoulder pads too much. I painted over them with yellow till I figure out what to do next with them.

As you can see I added more details in for the chains and shackles. It’s coming along nicely, all-in-all, I still have much more to do. I colored the eye white and used a red marker to paint the small eyelit on the figure. I think his hair looks too much like a cone but I painted it yellow, maybe he will end up having blond hair? I think I should pool my inner fantasy nerd and make the hair red or blue, what do you think?

I will work on the weapon at a later date. This is what I have done so far. It might not be much but I think its already a huge improvement over the original figure. Thanks for reading; I welcome any advice, comments or suggestions for this project. Check back soon for another update and keeping creating art!

More repaints of dollar store toys!

I love when violent skeletons come back to life in fantasy films! There is just something about it that gives me cold chills all over my nerd self. The special effects master, Ray Harryhausen, put so much bloody much evil and animal like emotions into his walking skeletons, such as in the movie Jason and the Argonauts. It’s with that inspiration that I am re-painting this dollar store toy. So grab a sharp rusty spear and follow me as I repaint this skeleton warrior.

These, cheap, Warrior Play Sets toys are amazing to me, the budget modeler. They have a good amount of detail for the wonderful price of $1 each. Plus, they are around the same size as Star Wars figures so they don’t stick out too much on my toy filled bookshelves. I don’t think most people use bookshelves to hold books anymore, but that’s beside the point. Like the Gimli knock-off figure from the same series that I am repainting; I hope to make something wonderful out of nothing. I say the same thing each day to myself when I look into the mirror.

This skeleton toy is made out of a semi-soft plastic with arms and leg articulation, plus the head. The figure has a good stance but seems to be more top heavy than my past figure I looked at. There are some nice details around the figure in particular; the skull belt buckle, plated boots and detailed helmet. I find that the bones of this figure are a bit too thick however, or maybe it’s that the armor is not bigger on the skeleton – what do you think?

There were also a lot of areas to clean up on this figure before I primed it. The soft plastic made it almost impossible to shave off all the burrs, as you can see on his face. I might try to go back in and fix that, but I don’t have anything small enough right now for that task. My other option was to just paint over that with the white base coat I applied. When painted soft plastic, I recommend applying a few light coats of primer, most of the time soft-plastic means that the paint won’t lay down as well but if you are careful and it’s not going to be played with then you will be able to paint most soft plastic items.

Included with this figure are only two weapon accessories when the last one had quite a bit more ways to yield death. You get a very large shield with nice details and a sharp scythe. I like these weapons however I would rather see a Roman like sword and small-round shield for this figure, from the ‘Jason movie. I am going to take a look at what weapons to use for this figure later after the figure is completed.

The picture I used in this update shows my current painting process thus far. Once again, I don’t have that many supplies so I have to work with what I have. That urge of to paint the figures like Romans or fallen soldiers from great fantasy films got the better of me. It’s also funny that I went from painting the Gimli-like figure with red armor as well. When you only have basic colors it’s easier to start with red and change it over a bit, that is what’s great about having many, many shades of paint, well I can dream of the old days till I get more supplies. This will limit my ability to shade as well, honestly I am not that great at that technique anyways with a brush so I will see what I can come up with.

Well after the primer coat of white dried I painted the skeleton with the base red paint I had. I mixed in a bit of blue to make it purple in shade. The gloves are painted a darker color because I could not replicate the same shade. At this point I think there is too much red on the figure. I don’t care for the sculpting of the gloves. I think they are not sculpted so well. So I might make them metallic gray or heavily scraped and damaged from battle. These are mainly base coats to get a fill for what I like and if I want to repaint anything so far. The tail of the hat has a gradient that I started from yellow to red that I will show at a later time. I added some washes over the skeleton to bring out the details of the chain mail and the face and I like what I am seeing.

Next up on this project is to make final decisions on colors then add washes of those base colors to clean up any splotching. I think i am going to leave the eye sockets black instead of the green in the original figure.

Thanks for reading; I welcome any advice, comments or suggestions for this project. Check back soon for another update and keeping creating art!

“Look out!” Count Dracula mixed with the hot rod craze of the 1950’s sounds like a mash-up from hell. The Lord of Darkness is speeding along in a car made from a coffin while drinking a glass of cold blood – who thinks of these sort of things because I want to give them a big high-five!

Here are some pictures of my model kit build-up of the Dracula’s Dragster model kit made by Polar Lights. This kit came out originally in 1960’s and appears to not be updated since then. I built this kit back in 2004 and it was one of the first bizarre, none automotive kits I built. Back then I was really just getting started into higher quality model building, taking it more serious as being inspired by special effects craftsman that I watched on DVD special features. I really did not have much fondness for these character car kits but I was surprise how fun they really were to make. In some ways, it’s painful to look back and see what I did right and wrong but its all part of the learning process.

If you are interested in the kit you can easily get one today as of this writing for around $8 – $12 if you look around. I would not pay more than $20 for this kit. It had a big print production and is rather simple in construction to put together. Really like aircraft models it all comes down to the finishing work. There are many things to paint and it’s a joy to see it all come together. There are far better sites out there detailing the build-up of this model and since it’s been so long since I made this one I can’t really contribute much more than my memories of building it. So search around for more information about this fun kit.

One of the best things about this kit is the awesome box it comes it. They reprinted the original box from the 60’s for this re-issue and it looks great. I still have it on my shelf acting as a trophy of sorts, it’s great to look at as all the old retro boxes are, they sure don’t make them like that anymore. Just be careful when buying to make sure it’s not a re-issue trying to be sold as an original.

If you look around online you will see people have painted this figure / car in many different ways. I went with the traditional movie look while trying to make the figure look sinister. It’s a shame they have not re-done the original Dracula movie in color yet, as to my knowledge they have not. I wish I had taken more pictures of this kit; these are all that I have left. I still have the kit so maybe someday I will take close-up pictures of it. I think some of the parts have gone missing like a body from a fog covered grave in Transylvania.

In looking at the pictures I can notice that I did not have the hood ornament on the model kit. I had a tendency back then to not finish up all the details of a kit, I am much better now but I wish I had put that on the car. It was a big eagle if I remember correctly. The kit went together rather easily; the head, steering wheel and champagne glass gave me the most problems. I had always wanted to fill the glass with some red dyed resign to simulate blood but I never got around to buying the resin. I sprayed the glass with future floor polish, well actually dipped it in it to give it that high-gloss look. If you have not used the stuff I suggest you put all your clear parts in it to give them an awesome safe clear finish.

In general I am not a huge fan of bobble head anything, I don’t get the humor, and maybe I need to ask a 5 year old what he thinks. Often the head is just larger without much more detail and that is the case here. The head is the best part but it could be better, of course the kit is from the 60’s so I will give it some slack. I would like to see an updated version of this, maybe in 1/24^th or 1/18^th scale with realistic proportions. There would be a lot of opportunity for accessories as well. Maybe if I get motivated one day I will do a modern update on this as a scratch built project, what do you think?

I see many things I did wrong with not only building the model but taking photographs of it. I can’t really complain, I was happy to get the kit, thanks to my dad. It expanded my interest in classic horror movies and creativity though the hobby of model building. I can just hear the count saying “There are far worse things awaiting man than death.”

Bonus Content –

Here is an over the top worded product ad from Amazon.com about the model kit. I like the part about its guaranteed to get a second glance. How do they actually guarantee that? I want to call them and have to conversation. “I want my money back because I when I finished my model kit people only passively glanced at it once.”

It’s Dracula, and he’s drinking from a champagne glass full of blood as he drives along in his souped-up mobile casket! A bat lends itself as a hood ornament, flames shoot from the tailpipes, and Dracula glares and snarls as he shows off his well-sharpened teeth. Once assembled and painted, this model is guaranteed to get a second glance. Before that, of course, the patient hobbyist will invest happy hours in assembling, gluing, planning colors, and painting this model to shelf-worthy perfection. The model is beige plastic, and is 9.5 by 2.5 by 6 inches when assembled. The kit comes with step-by-step assembly instructions. Glue, paint, and varnish are not included.

These guys are part of a long term project: I eventually will do some large scale early medieval skirmishing. Normans vs. Anglo-Saxons, or maybe Normans vs. Normans, or Normans vs. Vikings.

The shields aren’t perfect, but were fun to do.

The Perry Brothers has a range of Crusaders from the 1st Crusade, but they can serve perfectly as Dark Age Normans, I think. The models are great-a pleasure to paint. These are the only Perry minis that I’ve painted, but I can say that their vaunted reputation in the historical wargaming community is well deserved.

I’m not sure why, but I really enjoy painting horses. Not that I’m good at it.

I’ll be getting more of these guys, though I balk at the cost!

A pair of Knuckleduster figures. The guy on the left is a random gunman, the guy on the right is a version of The Man with No Name.

Below is Clint’s backside, and my first attempt at free-handing a pattern onto a mini. I suppose I should have included a chair as a prop.

The mayor’s back side.

Now we have another Clint character on the left, who I repainted after having initially tried the ‘dip’ method. On the right is a bandit, or someone who is extremely paranoid about SARS, and willing to do something about it. Mr. Sars is supposed to be wearing a chocolatey coat, similar to one in a famous Remington painting, but it was difficult to pull off.

At last we have The Duke, who stands alone. This is the figure that looks the best at table distances. Too bad his face was a bit mangled in the casting process.

After a disfiguring stagecoach accident…

So, that’s what I’ve been up to lately. I have a few more western minis to paint up, and a couple of squads of Khurasan Federals are on deck.

At my friend Brendon‘s suggestion, I’m going to try to get enough stuff together to run a simple old west skirmish game. Maybe some desperate shootout at a Pony Express station or remote ranch house. I’ll be using the freely available “The Rules with No Name.” The link leads to TRWNN’s Yahoo Group, which you’ll have to sign up for to get the rules.

All is not lost on the historical front, though. I’m going to take my time and continue to build up my WWII and Napoleonic figures. Here’s proof-I’ve started learning how to paint horse flesh.

I’ve only finished the basic horse’s coat here, but I’ve been using a series of washes and thinned paint, which is proving to be a really fun way to paint. I’ve got to work on blending colors together, but this horse looks pretty darn good at table distances. Not that you can tell from this zoomed in photo. I’m looking forward to mastering the technique, in any case.

I haven’t been totally lazy of late, but I still haven’t gotten back to my WWII stuff. This post will show that my gamer ADD is in full effect. At this point, I’m embracing it, rather than fighting it!

Knuckleduster Miniatures

First up are three 28mm cowboy miniatures from Knuckleduster’s (USA) line. These minis have oodles of flavor/attitude, and were pretty easy to paint. They do have oddly small feet paired with oddly large hands, but the proportions don’t look crazy at table distances. My girlfriend painted the guy on the far right, and I have to say that she did a much better job on her first miniature than I did.

Some of these are intended to be characters from movies and TV shows. I think the guy on the left might be Eastwood from Pale Rider, but I’m not sure about the other two.

Italeri 95th Rifles Officer

Next we have a test painting of an officer from Italeri’s British 95th rifles in 1/72nd. Painting figures in ‘true’ 1/72nd, compared to the overly large Valiant minis that I’ve been doing is quite an adjustment. They’re tiny! I’m guessing that the 95th rifles are one of the easier Napoleonic units to paint, and even they are fairly finicky and highly detailed (even if you can’t tell on this overly-dark mini). I can’t wait/dread getting to some of the more exuberant units.

Both of these groups of miniatures were done using the ‘dip’ method. I’m really not satisfied with this batch. They’re murky, murky, murky – even in these photos, which have had some pretty significant levels adjustment in Photoshop. The minis look OK at a few inches from your face, but at table-top lengths they turn to dark blobs. I’ll go back and highlight these guys and see if it helps, but I need to work on brightening up my painting!

I started playing the game Lord of the Rings 3 for the original Xbox to get in the spirit for painting this toy. The more I look at this figure and the character of Gimli I see how different they really look. Did the sculptor even watch the movies? Still, it’s a fun project but I can’t say the same about the game which is kind of lackluster and has really bad camera angles, it almost makes me want to take one of the extra weapons from this figure to the disc so nobody will get to try it either. Maybe I am jumping to conclusions, let’s jump into the update.

Well as you can see from the update there are some major changes and some minor ones to the toy. Having come home from my parents’ house to my very slim selection of paints, which equal to little more than basic colors, is a bit off-putting, but I will keep at it. The worst part is not having a place dedicated to painting and it’s a real pain to pull everything out. I still have not decided what diorama to make with this figure but I am thinking of a small ice cave, it will be easy to make and besides stro-foam I have all the other materials I will need. It would be awesome to make some water but I don’t have anything for that. So I am going to go with the ice theme and see what inspires me. I think I will play the game some more just for that reason.

For the helmet of the figure I added a black wash (a bit too thick) and highlighted the ends of the bone with some white paint to make them standout. The helmet is almost done I would say, I might try to do something with the yellow marks but I am not sure what. I plan to add some weathering to the helmet but I am going to wait till my diorama idea pans out.

The face looks much better; once again I added some black wash and some slight shading. I put some pink mixed with my skin tone to add highlights on the cheeks. The black wash on the eyes really makes them stand out. I forgot to paint the eye brows which will also help to make the face stand out. I painted the eyes a dark green but for some reason they look to beedy for my taste – what do you think? He kind of looks like he stared at the sun too long after his brother Hukuka told him that if you look at the sun for five minutes you see the sun god.

More black wash was added to the rest of the figure it really made a difference on the beard and made the blue highlights stick out more. I also added pink to his mouth but I overdid it so it looks like he is sticking out his tongue waiting for a sucker. If you look closely I added some pink to the large veins coming out of his arms.

The last part I worked on was to repaint the shoes to more of a reddish brown color. I think this balances out the figure more and it makes the warrior seem more unique then having standard black boots. I want to keep the belt black still and the gloves. I guess I would consider them to be made out of metal so I will weather them at the end some. The figure looks better in pictures which makes me happy. In time with more supplies I will work on shading more but for now I can only do what I can with what I have. I hope to work on this later this week so look for another update soon.

I am not a LOTR nerd, I have never read the books nor do I really care to, so sue me. After watching the three movies and playing through The Hobbit video game I can say it’s a very long interpretation of what Star Wars has done much better. If both LOTR and Star Wars could be considered war movies then ‘Wars does a much better job because we don’t lose sight of the main characters, not countless side characters all looking the same in a quest to gain a ring that could be picked up at any pawn shop in Middle-Earth.

Of the characters in the movies, none of them stick out to me as being a favorite. Maybe it’s because I too easily saw threw them to see the actors playing them. I accredit this to the over-done marketing the campaigns at the time of the movies releases. I saw tons of “behind the scenes” videos with the actors talking about how great it is to work on the Lord of the Rings movies. Enough of that crap, I don’t want to know who the actors are or how much they are bonding on set, I want to escape to a different world not thinking about Elijah Wood’s Hollywood life or who he might be dating.

Back to the figure, it will not get a high score from those hardcore toy collectors in the world. On its own it barely even seems like its being held together. Holding the figure I feel like I am going to crush it, the tension might be so strong in my arm when painting that it might break under the pressure like Frodo seemed to do in the movies. This dwarf, for lack of a better term, is about four inches tall and feels lightweight. He has some nice details and relief, as you can see, that’s great for painting. The quality is lacking and his arms and feet simply appear to be stuck into position rather than representing a real person.

If you look at the figure, for his size, his arms should be thicker even though they are very muscular, they should be bigger if he has that big of a beer gut. It seems impossible to have completely ripped upper body details and have a beer belly larger than a keg of the relaxing drink. The same can be said about his thin legs. The only thing I can think of is that he is on steroids, what a shame.

His face, helmet and beard all have great details, far more than in most dollar store items. I have seen bottles of soap with more details than most figures sold there. There is no mention of the sculpture of this toy and that is a shame. I hope in the future artists from around the world get credit for doing their work. Overall I am super happy with the detailing on this figure.

Some other weird things however are the very small belt and how his right arm does not have the same collar as on the left. I thought well maybe it’s a shield for shooting an arrow but he does not come with a bow. The other idea is that maybe he got his arm cut off fighting for the Rebellion…O, wait, wrong film series.

Going into this project I did not have any ideas of what to paint, or a scene to create, I just started to paint. Since the given paint application was pretty brisk it let my mind open up to new ideas. Sometimes when I work on a painting project I will cover it in primer and let it set for a while so I forget what the original figure looked like. Try that out sometime.

I spent the most time on the helmet, I wanted to wait till I blended the helmet more but I could not resist painting the small divots on it. If I had copper paint I would paint them in that color but since I am a poor-ass painter yellow it will have to do for now.

The character has, what looks like, a chain mail vest on. Now I decided to paint over it skin color because just having the center piece of the figure steel colored and the arms skin tone looked really bad – like eyeglasses bigger than your actual eye socket. You really don’t notice the error that much, or at least I don’t. He has some bumps on his chest that kind of look like chain mail but they spaces between them are too big to actual do any good against a charging orc’s blade.

As of this writing I don’t know what I am going to do for a diorama for this figure, until I decide what to do with him I am going to wait to paint more. You don’t want to spend hours painting and detailing just to turn the figure into a weathered bloody mess in a scene where he is fighting off a powerful dragon or wild beast.

If you have any ideas for this figure for me to paint please let me know. Also, have you shopped around at local dollar stores for toys to re-paint? If so, let me know about them and I will feature it on this site. Happy painting.

When I was a kid, like many other boys, I had a huge assortment of army men to play with. Actually, most of the time they were just cannon fodder for my Ninja Turtles to shred through. The survivors got blown away with a 10 pump shot from my bb gun. So in their honor, for this challenge I am trying to make these cheap army men figures look presentable. So lock and load your paintbrush it’s time to go to war!

Being a cheap discount modeler and figure painter I am always looking to find a toy that is, for one, cheap and offers some details to paint. I figure since I don’t have my high quality painting tools with me anymore then why bother buying a $50 kit when I won’t be able to do it justice. Dollar stores or discount shops offer cheap toys to paint. Of course I grabbed this pack of figures for the glorious price of one dollar. Another good source is garage sales, trash bins or your pesky uncle who is throwing away things. Don’t limit your painting to just model kits.

In this pack you get five large figures with two of them repeating. There is no ID’s on the soldiers but they did have a choice between green and tan. They are about five inches tall, or normal action figure size. They don’t have any articulation at all; think of them simply as blown up army men. I choose tan because it would be easier to cover with primer. I don’t know why I did not take more pictures before I started painting but these will have to do.

Each of the figures is about five inches tall with a moderate amount of sculpted details. My first observation is that they seem to be a bit thin, like they have not received their daily rations. It seems like they just enlarged the smaller army men figures to make these but I guess that is not really that bad of an idea. The face really lacks much detail at all – from afar they don’t look that bad but up close they lack strong relief and seem to be kind of rounded out as if they had eaten too much Spam out hunting down Charlie.

You can see in the pictures what the other figures look like. The first one I decided to paint was the solider holding a rifle. He is holding what looks like to be an M16ish kind of rifle but his outfit screams WWII. I choose this one first because if I messed up I had another to paint as well. My first idea was to make a whole team of soldiers, painting them all the same. But after I looked at them for a while I decided to just make one-off soldiers. I plan on making mini-dioramas with each one if they turn out well enough.

I wanted to change my solider over a bit so I decided to cut his arm off and reposition it as if he was celebrating a hard earned victory. Maybe he has thoughts of opening up a cold one or simply not being shot at anymore. One thing I can say is that if you plan on repositioning the arm make sure u do it before you paint the figure. This guy told me before the surgery that he did not have insurance but since I was cutting his arm off I figured that is a fair trade. The arm was easy to cut off, it feels creepy to say that, I just used a hot knife as my dremmel is back at home flirting with the band saw.

If you take the end of the knife and heat it up some more you can smooth out the part you cut off so it will glue back together easier. I also heated up the ends of the arm against the flame of a candle to help them “melt” onto each other along with lots and lots of glue. The putty will also act as another sealer to hold the arm in place. If you wanted to be really a go-getter, you could install a wire to hold the parts in place – I figured my method would work for this. I mean for crying out loud I don’t even have a doctor’s license.

What you see in the pictures is what I have done, some simple base coats and adding colors to make things stick out. I changed the jacket to a lighter color to make it contrast more, I found everything was getting to look the same. I chipped some paint off the helmet in an attempt to make it look weathered. I also did the same for the gun but I think I am just going to start over with that part.

What’s Next:

Up next for this project is to sand the arm and fill it with the necessary putty. Now that I am looking at the figure again for this posting I am thinking maybe I should add a cliché flag that the soldier is holding. I might do a side project on making a generic flag – that sounds interesting.  I should be posting another update soon.
I encourage everybody to comment, subscribe and let me know what you are working on. There never is a right or wrong way to do something and we can all learn from each other.

28mm metal viking. This fellow must be the leader, because his hair is blowing dramatically in the wind. My first attempt at blonde hair and non-dip based painting methods.

Red and green are the colors of Christmas, a decidedly non-viking holiday. My commander’s pants and cloak may be detracting from the fierceness of his visage.

This guy is some kind of giant. He’s from the same manufacturer as the rest of my vikings, but would be about 7′ tall, at scale.

Giant Gudrick’s hair looks a bit two-dimensional, as does his clothing. I need to work on creating a sense of light and shadow, without going for that certain hyper-contrasty look that so many miniature painters use.

This ruddy brown hair looks better than the flat lifeless brown that my giant viking is sporting.

In my ignorance of ten years ago, I ordered these Vikings without their shields. This realization only dawned on me after considerable pondering on the fact that 4 of the 6 models had oddly clenched fists. I’m a dolt, sometimes. Shields, and even shield transfers, are readily available on the internet, so no big deal.

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…Edit..While looking for 28mm shields, I’ve found where these figures came from (if you’ve read earlier posts, you’ll know that I purchased these vikings 10 years ago, and had no recollection of the name of the manufacturer)!

They’re Wargames Foundry Viking Characters. Mystery solved! Wargames Foundry also has a nice selection of Normans. Hrmmm…

As you may know from earlier posts, I have been using the quick-dip method of painting my miniature figures. I’ve been working on my 28mm vikings, and I thought I’d give legitimate three-tone mini painting a try. It’s been a mixed bag, so far, and I’m not sure the effort (and time) is worth it, but I thought I’d put up a quick post with the method I’m using for the faces and other skin areas. This method has totally been cribbed from the Victrix Miniatures website.

Step-one: the base coat

Of course, you’ve primed your figure beforehand, and most guides seem to suggest black primer for 28mm figures. I find it difficult to pick out detail with black primer, which causes no end of the repainting, touching up, and “Oh, so that’s what that is!” moments. I may go back to tried and true white primer on the next batch.

In any case, I’ve selected Burnt Sienna as a nice ruddy dark color for shadows on skin, and applied it in two or three coats of thinned acrylic paint.

Step two – Mid Tones

With the dark base coat applied, the Victrix guide suggests using Dwarf Flesh (Citadel) as the next layer. I suppose this serves as a mid-tone for those surfaces receiving diffuse or reflected light. I think it’s a good idea to consider the direction of the light at this stage. For my minis I tend to select up and to the left for the location of the sun, which means highlights are going to be in that location. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I think you could probably stop at this point for quick and dirty projects. You get some nice definition with only two tones, particularly at these small scales. 28mm is still a small scale, right?

Step three – Highlites

Good ‘ol Victrix guide suggests using Elf Flesh to do your final highlights, though adding a bit of white to your Dwarf Flesh (or mid-skin-tone of choice) would do the trick. I had a pot of Elf Flesh, so on it went.

I may have over-highlighted on this figure, but with that caveat out of the way, it’s helpful to consider the shape of the face. Brows and temples are generally going to be highlighted (though not the center of the brow!). The ridge of the nose will also be lighter in color-not the entire honking blob like I’ve done here. I lack the motor skills and rods and cones necessary to do eyes correctly, but doing eyes properly certainly brings a lot of personality to the figure. I may invest in a jeweler’s loupe visor to see (ha!) if I can do something about the situation.

Anyway, there are several hundred rambling words describing how to do three color layered Caucasian flesh. The whole article could easily have consisted of three pictures and words, (burnt sienna, dwarf flesh, elf flesh) but that’s just not the way I roll. I do roll with half-a-decade-old slang, though.

Toeing the Line

I must admit, a bit of gamer ADD has set in over the summer, but I haven’t been totally irresponsible to my stated WW2 skirmish goals! I’ve been putting together Academy’s 1/72nd “Light Vehicles of the Allies and Axis” over the past week. The kit includes a Jeep (w/.50 cal machine gun mounted), Kubelwagen (top up, or down), a funky motorcycle with treads, and a ton of 55 gallon drums, ammo boxes, and jerry cans.

Academy’s “Light Vehicles of Allied & Axis” is a beautifully made kit.

This is an inexpensive kit, but even so, you don’t get a tremendous amount for your wargaming dollar. I’m used to getting a couple of tanks with my Armourfast and Italeri quick-build kits, and even though there are three light vehicles in the Academy box, somehow they don’t measure up. I’m guessing it’s because the kit doesn’t really contribute to completing a combat unit.

I do think the kit is a good bargain for a scale modeler. You can build one jeep, one kubelwagen, the motorcycle thing, and then you’re given enough of the stated accessories to adorn the vehicles and contribute significantly to a diorama or two. The kit is extremely well done-flash is almost non-existent, instructions are clear, and everything fits together marvelously. The vehicles are maybe a little fiddly for wargaming-I don’t see the mounted .50 caliber on the jeep surviving very many games, for instance. I have my doubts about some of the lights and other bric-a-brac on the kubelwagen, as well. I typically don’t base vehicles, but I’m considering it for these guys, just to try and keep them intact.

All that said, the only real problem with this kit is that no drivers, passengers, or crew are provided. You’ll have to source them yourself and hope they fit. HaT does manufacture various sets of ‘tank riders,’ which might prove useful. I’m going to order a set of the Americans, which are my most immediate need, and see how they work. Looking at the sprue, I’m going to have to kitbash a driver, somehow, as all the figures are carrying some sort of weapon in their hands.

I could have been a bit more careful in planning the build and making painting easy on myself. For instance, I never should have mounted the seats in either of these vehicles before painting. I don’t anticipate TOO much trouble, though. It will all come out in the minwax wash. Ahem.

Waste of Time, or Time’s-a-Wasting?

So, I bought these beautiful metal 28mm Vikings nearly a decade ago. I purchased the things over E-bay from a seller in England, and I can’t, for the life of me, remember who the manufacturer was. Maybe Wargames Foundry? In any case, they were never painted (I never managed to get anything painted back then), and have been languishing in a cardboard box for the better part of this century. The recent spate of Dark Ages games like Saga and the two Dux has inspired me to dust them off. They’ve been cleaned and primed, and may actually get painted before my other projects. It would be nice to have a short break from olive drab and dunkegelb! It’s satisfyingly easy to get chainmail to look good!

I’ve had these 28mm Vikings for years, but have never painted them. The time has come.

I’ve ordered some Perry Brothers Crusaders, which will serve as Normans, and I may use Song of Blades and Heroes by Ganesha Games to do some skirmishing with these guys until (and if) I settle on a set of Dark Ages rules. I’m pretty excited to put my hands on sculpts by the vaunted Perry Brothers, though the sculpting quality may be wasted on my meager painting skills.

A Dysfunctional Relationship in the Making

Napoleonics. I don’t know much of anything about the Napoleonic era, except for what you can learn by reading the Aubrey-Maturin and Sharpe novels, but looking around the blogosphere, I find the panoply of brightly colored figures to be nearly irresistible.

Scratch the ‘nearly’ part, as I’ve bought a couple of boxes of Italeri 1/72nd Napoleonics, and I plan on doing some skirmish gaming with them using either Song of Drums and Shakos by Ganesha Games, or Sharp Practice by Too Fat Lardies. I’m sure I’ll be starting out with SoDaS, because working up to the number of figures that Sharp Practice (which I’m really really really excited to try out!) is suited for is going to take a significant amount of time. I can’t imagine how the hundreds of grognards that game at division or corps level manage it!

Lovely Italeri 1/72 Napoleonic French Dragoons

In any case, I’ve cleaned up a few 95th rifles and French Dragoons, and I have a box of Zvezda Voltigeurs winging their way towards me as I type.  Maybe I can get an opponent interested in this era with some SoDaS play.

The detail on these Italeri British 95th Rifles (1/72) is amazing.

I think it may be somewhat frustrating to do Napoleonic skirmish in 1/72. The figures don’t have a tremendous amount of personality, and I haven’t found a good source for individual figures. An immediate problem is that there are no decent dismounted French dragoons in plastic, and they’re essential for the Sharp Practice scenario book. I’m sure there are some good 1/72-20mm metal figure makers out there, though, and I’m guessing/hoping I could use them to fill in the gaps.

Here is my WIP video for this statue I am painting. I got this for a dollar at a local thrift store. Sorry no before shots but the statue is pewter. The scene depicted is of a maylay dancer, but I don’t know much more than that.

Here is my current progress on this Super Mario figure I got from a rummage sale. Mario is one of my favorite video game characters and this was a blast to re-paint. Please let me know what you think.

Here is my current painting progress on this TMNT figure I got from a garage sale for .25 cents. I don’t have the before shots uploaded yet. Please let me know what you think.

First up, everything I’ve got going on.

What have I got going on?

Can’t See the Forest for the Trees
You’ll notice a veritable wilderness of Woodland Scenics trees. I’ll go ahead and say it: WS trees are a complete waste of money for gaming, and I’ll never buy them again. I’ve used the official $8 hob-e-tac glue, I’ve used superglue, I’ve used copious amounts of matte varnish, and I’ve used a fine mist of PVA. NOTHING will convince the damned foilage and bushes to stick to the tree armature on a regular and predictable basis. Not to mention that the armatures are completely out of scale for 20mm figures. Bah. These will get me through the first game, though. Once I finish up the bases, that is.

There’s Rules, then there are RULES
The astute observer will see that I have a home-printed copy of the groan-inducingly named “Troops, Weapons, & Tactics” by Too Fat Lardies. As an aside, I also ordered Sharp Action from the Lardies, which is a dangerous thing for any number of reasons. Anyway, to the task at hand.

I’ll be using TW&T over NUTS! simply because TW&T is so much more engaging of a read. Organizationally, the two rule sets are about equal, that is to say slightly shoddy. However, TW&T is chock full of designer notes and explanations, not only of the how, but also of the why. I really dig that. Another advantage is that TW&T includes a lot of discussion of historical tactics for the Brits, Germans, USA, and Russian armies. As a newbie, that is much appreciated, as well. I’ll eventually get around to running NUTS!, but for now the Lardies have me much more enthused, and I think that’s quite important.

Something to Aim For
Directly underneath TW&T is the Skirmish Campaigns scenario book “Heroes of Omaha and Panzer Lehr.”

You can’t miss it, for its cover is an eye-searing shade of day-glo green. This book contains three campaigns for skirmish level games, and the one that I will be concentrating on covers the initial period after D-day. The campaign follows the progress of a platoon from the 29th Infantry Division as it works its way inland from the beach head. I briefly considered picking up the D-day scenario book, but I don’t think I’d ever get the terrain finished for something covering the beach, landing craft, massive bunkers, dragon’s teeth, and such.

In any case, I’m slowly working my way to building up the forces for the first scenario of the campaign, which is why I have the following company and battalion support elements primed and based.

The Irresistible Lure of Tanks

The fun stuff...

You’ll also notice a pair of Tigers and Stug IIIs. No, I don’t need them, but I figured I should get the inevitable Tiger model building out-of-the-way and the Stug was so historically ubiquitous that I’m sure they’ll come in handy some time soon.

The Tigers are Italeri fast build and the Stugs are Armourfast. Both models were pretty much a breeze to put together, but a word of warning about the Armourfast kit: It’s very hard to locate the treads on the tank model, for there are no guides, tabs, ledges, or any other firm indicators as to where the things go. The proportions of the boxtop illustration and the model don’t exactly match up, either, so the illustration is not a lot of help.

Still, German armor. What’s not to love?

Last, but not Least

An Italeri Pak 40 with a MUCH too large base

And here’s a Pak-40 that I’ve been working on. I don’t know why, but I’ve based this thing on an incredibly over-sized sheet of polystyrene. I suspect this will cause problems in play. This AT gun will come in handy, as it’s a possible attached unit for Panzer Lehr in the Skirmish Campaigns book.

I’ve got the crew block painted and dipped. Some of the ‘servants,’ as Italeri calls them, were wearing camo smocks, so I got to try my hand at splinter pattern camouflage. We’ll see how it turns out as a final product. I was feeling pretty good about my effort, until I applied the dip, which really subdued the camo pattern.

Not pictured are a couple of segments of wall that I’ve sculpted out of Fimo. They didn’t get photographed because they’re still wet with primer. I think they’ll turn out well, but the modeling clay is not going to be a long-term solution. It just takes too much time to sculpt brick and stone patterns by hand. I’ll probably look into making or buying plaster molds for that sort of thing.